Just had my first exploding computer

Terrible excitement.

I turned on my internet PC and instantly noted that it was making a funny noise whilst it was booting - sort of a screeching. It was alarming enough for me to decide to hold the power button in, to turn it off, whilst it was booting.

Anyway - this is the exciting part - about 5 seconds after I turned it off, it exploded.

Chuffing exploded.

It was turned off - yet it still exploded.

Isn't that exciting? I wasn't expecting that. I was just about to crawl under the desk to take a look at it. I'd never have thought it would Large itself.

Nasty smell to it - all sort of burnt electrical smell.

I wish I had videoed it.

Chuffing exploded.

How big was the explosion? Are we talking a little bang sound, or a full-on epic hollywood disaster which launched fireballs out of your house windows?

That's one of the 'fun' features of modern ATX motherboards -- even when they're "off", there's still voltage on your motherboard (for wakeup on LAN, wakeup on keypress, etc. support)

Often when people talk of exploding computers, what they really mean is "It made a noise and smelt funny so I turned it off, and now it won't turn on any more".

I take it this "internet" pc wasn't your main one.

Also, how do modern atx PC provided power to the motherboard without the power supply being on? As in, there's no fan on.

I did see an extremely cartoony puff of smoke float up from a parallel port once, after it got shorted out.

(A fraction of a second after the owner of the computer said: "You're wrong, I don't need to turn it off first. I've done this a million tim---ZAP *crackle* (puff)". Absolute classic.)


And there's the good ol' "All I did was plug my spaceheater in the UPS and it started beeping really loud for a minute or two, then it made a loud popping noise and no nothing works anymore"

Last time built a PC I wired up the front USB ports wrong, so one of them got very hot until the plastic on the wiring melted and starting smoking inside the case. That was fun.

Ouch.

Believe me ATX motherboards are better than the old AT ones. I had a nasty experience once when junior support guy connected the power switch incorrectly on an old AT board. On an AT system the MAINS current actually goes right up to the switch. While checking out the guys work I tried to turn this one on and had 240V going through me for about 3 seconds (it's long enough believe me).

Needless to say I found the guy some duties more suited to his ability.

By supplying only a very low voltage to the board (and switches) when not required ATX is better and safer than the old AT system.

Darkheart

Great you survided, Puki ;)

In the early 80's the power supply of my families IBM 80086 Portable (18kg!!!) died with a 20cm eplosion flame followed by thick black smoke coming out the fan slots. We had to extinguish the fire with a bucket of water and repaper the room afterwards!

This explosion was huge - would have killed a hamster stone-dead.

Luckily I was standing up at the time and only suffered a severed eye-lash - completely severed by the blast.

Looks like the PSU has blown - totally huged itself. I don't have a spare one that is both 24pin plus the 4 pin - so I shall have to buy a new one.

Not sure if I will have a dry night tonight though.

I guess this kinda proves again that computers run on smoke. When the smoke comes out, they quit running!

ATX Powersupplies are only turned fully when not connected to the power outlet, or when the powersupply has a switch itself which is powered off.

You can see this by looking at the led on the mainboard indicating power. Mostly all USB ports get power as well even when computer is turned on.

Check for burned connectors/cables before replacing the powersupply to be sure it was no shortcut from any other device...

you may also need to replace other parts, since then a PSU blows, it could pump all kinds of voltages through the equipment. BOOBOOM. usually pretty much everything that is connected to the power supply when it blows like that gets killed in the process.

LOL, You probably overloaded it with your enormous "dong" of a graphics card, or the terrabytes of multi diskspace you use for your vast "stuff" collection :)

We had one recently at work, a guy (our electronic engineering dept no less!) put in a HUGE brand new geforce moster 9800gt i think it was, with only a 300 watt-er. Didnt boom though, just popped and died with a bad smell. Came to us to ask us in I.T. why it wasnt working...(erm.. duhuurr! :)

Not hered of powersupplies going boom though, but there have been a worryingly large amount of laptops.

;Cool (and irrelevent) real life laptop boom!s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC0UWIYswKI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLGRBgr9SE
;A Cool experiment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWq6rWzChw
Thats laptop batteries though.

I've had to replace a few blown PSU's in my time. Never been any real reason for it, none of the systems were particularly crowded or running high end gfx cards.

Yeh, I may not bother just replacing the PSU.

I found another PSU - ATX one but without the additional 4 pin molex which my internet PC's mobo needs. I plugged that one in and connected the main 20pin connector but nothing happened - other than the power light coming on and a split second spurt of activity.

Don't want to go an buy a new PSU with the 4 pin connector to find that something else has blown with the PSU.

Probably just buy a new internet PC - or build one. Actually, building is a good idea - I can start with buying the PSU - in case it works - if not, then I buy what I need (possibly a new mobo)


I've sellotaped my severed eye-lash back on - hopefully it will heal.


I've got another 3-4 computers, so I will survive.

High end gfx cards can screech if their exta power cable isn't supplyig any juice.

I got an old Amstrad CPC464 from a jumble a few years back. 2nd time I powered it up, *BANG!* Bright flash, a load of smoke from the monitor and a nasty smell of PCBs.

Stuff re-building it. It was an old e-machines - 1.8GHz Celeron thing - purely an internet machine. What's the point of buying a new PSU and mobo? The CPU might have blown too.

You can buy them for under £200.00:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1664621806.1209127655@@@@...

http://www.pcoption.co.uk/pcbaseunits/

All I need is a base unit.

himm.. that's probably because of a lizard went into the power unit of your PC. and because short circuited.

>Not sure if I will have a dry night tonight though.

Does that mean you are up to 4 plastic bedsheets tonight?

Any pictures?

PC WORLD Computer are OVER PRICE !!!
You better Off building yourself a pc instead.